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It was more than one of 82 — a lot more. It would be foolish to pretend otherwise. Justin Timberlake wouldn’t be courtside for Pacers-Raptors in the dead of winter. Pacers-Heat, even this early in the season, is a marquee event, drawing ESPN, Yahoo and every other national set of eyes.

That said, it would be foolish to claim this as some kind of statement game — even if Lance Stephenson, who is prone to overstatement, earlier said this was “like a championship game.”

So was a statement made in the Pacers’ 90-84 victory over the Miami Heat at the fieldhouse Tuesday night?

Negative.

But the Indiana Pacers made a point, one that should resonate throughout the NBA and specifically the Eastern Conference.

For all of Miami’s hardware — and we know they have two hard-won championships and a gear no one else in the league possesses — for now, the Indiana Pacers rule the roost and remain the very best team in the entire NBA.

Nineteen-and-three.

Nineteen-and-three.

And when they’re right, when their defense is squeezing the life out of an offense, when they’re sharing the basketball and playing with great will and confidence, they can beat anybody anywhere — San Antonio in San Antonio, Miami in Indianapolis, no matter who, no matter where.

Even on a night when they were loose with the basketball, committing 21 turnovers, the Pacers muscled their way through and over the small-ball Heat. Roy Hibbert was phenomenal, scoring 24 points on 10-of-15 shooting.

So when’s Game 2 of this playoff series?

Oh, wait, the playoffs are months away.

That’s why we’re not in the “statement” business in this little corner of the universe. A lot of things can and will happen between now and the end of May, the beginning of June. The Pacers will look different, assuming Danny Granger can get healthy and be a contributor. The Heat will look different, with Michael Beasley in the lineup, and maybe with Greg Oden dressed and playing — and you know Oden was signed specifically to deal with Hibbert and the Pacers’ big men.

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“I can’t even wrap my mind around the importance of (the victory) except to say we’re one win closer to our goal,” Pacers coach Frank Vogel said. “I think ‘statement wins’ are for you guys to write about and not for me to talk about.”

There will be the obvious and understandable temptation to turn Tuesday night’s Pacers-Heat clash of the titans into some kind of “statement game,” especially for Pacers fans who are reveling in this win and this blazing start.

That would certainly make for the better column, because we’re all about “grand statements”— in my biz.

But no.

While this is certainly more than one game out of 82, while this is the most intriguing game in the moribund Eastern Conference, there are no statements to be made here.

What happens if the Pacers go to Miami next Wednesday and get rolled by the Heat? What’s the statement there? That the home team wins most of these games? We knew that already.

And let’s be honest about the Heat: They’re coasting at 16-6. They’ll turn it on when they have to turn it on, just as they did during their long winning streak last year, just as they did in the playoffs. As great as the Pacers are playing, they don’t have that fifth (or is it sixth?) gear the Heat possess. For all of the Pacers’ excellence, they don’t have a James, and when LeBron James and even Dwyane Wade are at the top of their games, nobody in the league can touch them.

A couple of months from now, these two teams will meet in the Eastern Conference finals, and what happened here Tuesday night, and what happens when they play again in the regular season, won’t mean squat.

“I've been in this league long enough to know not to make too much of certain regular season games,” James said before the game.

History tells us not to overplay a big game in December.

The last three years, the Heat lost the regular-season series to the team they beat in the Eastern Conference finals.

So there’s that.

Here is what’s significant, besides the fact the Pacers are now three games ahead of the Heat in the race for home-court advantage in the Eastern Conference: On a night when the Pacers committed 21 turnovers and gave up 30 first-quarter points — “We played with the jitters,” Paul George said — they still got the best of the Heat over the last three quarters, and by a significant margin.

George didn’t put up MVP numbers (17 points, six turnovers), but played with an MVP constitution, defending James and, at times, Wade, ultimately limiting James to 6-of-16 shooting and just 17 points.

“To do what he did, scoring 15 points in the second half and guarding LeBron James, and then Dwyane Wade when LeBron was out, it’s a special performance by him (George),” Vogel said

Can’t we just fast-forward and get on with the business of Pacers-Heat III? Can’t we just ignore the rest of the moribund Eastern Conference and move on to the business that matters?